


Scar Tissue

by poisontaster



Series: Every Broken Thing [10]
Category: Angel: the Series, Supernatural
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Developing Relationship, Lwa | Loa | L'wha, M/M, Multi, Past Relationship(s), Pre-Series, Sibling Incest, Stanford Era, Voodoo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-16
Updated: 2006-04-16
Packaged: 2018-05-09 11:00:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5537426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisontaster/pseuds/poisontaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam's under a spell. But he needs advice about whether it's from someone else, or the product of his own mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scar Tissue

**Author's Note:**

> Chronologically, this story would happen not long after "the boys i mean are not refined", during Sam's Stanford years. In the Angel timeline, it takes place between "Origin" and "Not Fade Away" (Season 5), but the timeline is a wee bit tweaked for authorial purposes. While I do have some, small, knowledge of voudon, I am not a practitioner, and I apologize deeply for anything I may have gotten wrong. I did try to write with deep respect. Gratitude to mona1347 for her assistance.

Alone in the waiting room, Sam fidgets a little and thinks about how ironic this is.

_"I need your help," he'd said to Connor, and Connor had said, "Okay."_

To the general public, there isn't much differentiation in the supernatural. Witches, werewolves, windigo…they aren't much different than table-tappers, UFOologists, and telekinetics. But the truth is that John Winchester had held a very pragmatic approach to hunting and a barely concealed contempt for the charlatans and mountebanks that populate the fringe of what they do.

This, however, Sam thinks is a little different.

_The thing about Connor is that he doesn't ask extraneous questions. If it isn't_ where is it, how do I kill it, or is it dead yet? _, Connor's rather supremely uninterested. Which is…fine. Just fine with Sam. Because when he goes to Connor and asks him if he knows anyone who can get a spell lifted, the last thing he wants is a lot of awkward questions._

Sam's never been to a place like this. He doesn't know shit about vodoun. And for as much as he'd like to have felt some…change in pressure, or prickle over his skin that would speak to him of magic, or power, he doesn't feel anything. It's just a shop, dim and slightly dusty with shelves full of books and jars and a weird smell like herbs and cigars and rum. He wonders if this is a mistake.

_"Yeah," Connor says, with that crazy half-grin of his. "I've heard of somebody. They say she's the real deal." He shrugs. Connor doesn't have much use for magic either. Not violent enough. Not…hands-on enough. "You want me to go with you?"_

_"Nah," Sam says, trying for casual. It's hard to tell with Connor how much he succeeds, though. Everything's kind of hard with Connor that way._

Finally, a woman—the same woman that greeted him—comes from the back. At the faint squeak of the door, Sam straightens, torn between faint embarrassment and stomach churning anticipation. She looks at him. "You haven't touched your tea," she says with faint reproach. Sam glances at the painted porcelain cup next to him on the spindly table. He smiles at her apologetically. "Well, no matter," she sighs and beckons with one slim coffee colored hand. "She will see you now."

_"What, don't you trust me?" Connor's tone is teasing, but underneath it Sam senses he's not._

_Sam shakes his head. "It's not about trust," he avers. Trust is a tricky thing with them both; they have too much baggage between them to be fixed by fucking or hunting, the two things they have in common. Well, that and the lack of any family to speak of. "It's just…personal."_

_"Oh,_ personal _," Connor nods and smiles again, faintly mocking. "Yeah. That's different."_

It's much warmer in the inner room of the shop and there are symbols painted on the dark hardwood floor. The amalgam of smells is stronger here too, underlaid with a rusty thread he knows is blood. There are small altars in the four corners and a larger one in the center of the back wall, an enormous tiered thing draped in snowy white cloth and bristling with too many things for him to identify. Sam takes the time to absorb all this before he turns his attention to the woman seated at the round table in the center of the room.

Her smile is crooked and Sam feels a new bite of trepidation. "Hello, Sam."

_The truth is, he's desperate. The truth is, he'll try anything, if it will just make these damn dreams stop. He's so tired he feels like he could reach out and put his hand through reality like punching through worn and rotted cloth. His teachers have noticed, Connor's noticed—hell, even his dorm mate's noticed, and Jay doesn't notice shit about Sam._

Sam takes the seat offered to him, though it galls just a bit to have his back to a door. One hand absently massages the part of his shoulder where he still—even three months later—bears the faded mark of teeth. It aches at odd moments; a pain he hopes will eventually go away. "I… I, uh… I don't know where to start."

Gisele Montglane is one of those women that could be any age from thirty to sixty, her caramel skin unlined over strong, prominent bones. She holds out her hand—smooth and unwrinkled, belying the flecks of pure white in her short curls—and Sam takes it. There is nothing remarkable about her touch. Still, at the contact with his skin, her smile falters. "Oh," she says. "Oh, _baby…_ "

_Sometimes, he can't see anything. It's just someone's—_ yeah, Sam, "someone's" _—hand, gliding and smoothing over the naked skin of his shoulders and back, tracing the constellations of his birthmarks, dipping into the hollow of his back, arcing over the curve of his ass and down onto his flanks, over and over and over, sensation that goes straight to his cock, hard and trapped under him…_

Sam shifts uncomfortably. Not so much because he believes Montglane truly sees into him as much as he's never liked pity, or even sympathy; an emotionalism that leaves him sweaty and vaguely embarrassed. "I think," he says, his tongue suddenly thick and inarticulate. "I think there's a spell on me."

"Hmm…" Montglane's grip shifts from Sam's hand to his wrist, first two fingers pressing against the pulse point. "Well, we'll have to see, won't we?" Her head cocks a little and her eyes—a surprisingly light hazel, given her complexion—go unfocused. "Papa," she says, not looking at Sam, "you wanna get the door?" Sam turns to look behind him, uneasy. Even the woman who let him in is gone; they're in the small room alone.

_Sometimes it's that abandoned farm in Wisconsin, the one with the whole family of ghosts. His eyes are closed against someone's shoulder, but he can smell the grass, uncut and wild, and heady green scent of clover. Someone's pushing him gently into the soft and splintering wood of the barn and the sun's shining down like an anvil on the back of his neck while they jerk him off fast and rough, hands nearly familiar as his own…_

Montglane's shoulders _twitch_ and her head falls forward on a neck suddenly limp. Just as quickly, her head snaps back and beneath her fluttering lashes, Sam can only see the whites of her eyes, without any pupil. All at once, he can hear his own heart, thumping loud and rapid, and it sounds vaguely like drums. Montglane's head slowly comes back to center and she opens her eyes. He didn't notice before, how dark and thick the ring that surrounds the pupil is, nearly black and startling between the hazel and the white.

"All this fuss over one ol' kiss." Montglane chuckles, and her voice and laugh sound nothing like her voice before, faint accent slurring thicker. "And some itchy dreams." Another laugh, deep and fruity. "Poor boy. Just all kinds of fucked up, ain't ya? Papa'll open the door, sure, _cher_ , but don’t take the loa t'see this boy got worse problems than even we can help him with."

_Sometimes it's a bed and a hand between his shoulder blades holding him flat on his belly. A cock deep inside him, insistent and angry, forcing arousal on him, forcing him to feel a pleasure so intense he can only fist his hands in the sheets and ride where it takes him; something he wants_ so much _and doesn't want at all. Something that makes him push back, taking it deeper, harder, leaves him uncertain whether he wants to come or cry…or both._

"I…" Sam's free hand is fisted in his lap, hard enough that his nails dig furrows from the skin. "I don't think… I think this was a mistake," he says finally, the words unexpectedly hard to force out of his tight throat. His heart is still beating hard, rumbling and knocking in his ears. He tries to pull his wrist out of Montglane's, only to have her fingers tighten like a vise.

"Oh, too late for that, _cher_ ," Montglane says in that same deep and relentlessly cheerful voice. "Too late by half. Open the door, gotta pay your respects to those on the other side, yeah? Don't wanta be rude, do you, boy?"

One more laugh, not nearly kind as the first, and Montglane's shoulders and head snap back again.

_And really, he can't remember the last time he got a good night's sleep. For a while, he blamed that on the hunting, waking in old rhythms, retracing old ruts, first alone and then, later, with Connor. Those who hunt, hunt the night. But half the time—more than half the time—when he does throw himself across the bed, exhausted and sick with it, it's only to fall into these same seamless aching dreams; ones that leave him either hard and gasping to finish himself off, or coming on himself like he's a kid all over again. Even Valium—and his skin prickles, to resort to drugged unconsciousness—hasn't been able to shatter the cycle. It has to be a spell--_ her _spell. It must be._

"No, of course not," Sam says, to Montglane, or whatever resides behind those wide catlike eyes. He hasn't left so much behind that he'd just piss off the spirits for the hell of it. "I'm sorry, I just…"

"…Don't believe in spirits," Montglane says in yet another voice, this one thick as honey and purring. Her spine loosens and her head comes back to center again, another person, another _spirit_ behind her skin. This one is round shouldered and coquettish, arching Montglane's back to push her breasts up and forward. They're nice breasts, Sam has to admit, full and slightly upthrust. Sam swallows, his throat suddenly dry as she smiles.

"I believe in spirits," he avers. His voice comes out rougher, deeper than he means and when he shifts in the creaking wooden chair, it's for different reasons than before.

"'Course you do." Against his wrist, her fingers caress the veins, no longer pressing. His skin erupts in goosebumps as surely as if she'd run those strong deft fingers down his back. "But there are spirits and spirits, no? And while you chase the one, you run damn hard and fast from t'other." Her eyes soften, and she reaches forward and touches the backs of her fingers to his cheek. "Run from so many tings, don't you, boy?"

"I wish…" Sam's thighs are tense, clenched against the impulse to come over the table and screw Montglane to the floor. "I wish you wouldn't call me boy."

Her head flings back in a laugh and the hand on his face turns to pinch his cheek. Sam averts his face. "Did Erzulie prick your pride a little bit, pretty one? Ayuh, you're a man, pretty, won't nobody take that from you. But still a boy yet to one as old as _moi_ and don't you forget it." She slaps his cheek, fondly but still forcefully before she lounges back in her chair again, eyes alight and sexy as all hell. "Now, you got questions for me, _petit_ , or you got some other idea how you want to pass the time?"

It's hard for him to remember, to summon back the reasons that brought him here in the first place. He can _smell_ her, a musk like flowers and salt water and womanhood, raw and shocking. He turns his wrist and grabs Montglane—or Erzulie's—hand, gripping hard. Erzulie's tongue sneaks out to wet soft bronze lips, candy pink and pointed.

_Worst are the ones that he knows are nothing but dreams. Not memories transmuted and hazed, but pure fantasy; things that never happened but that—somewhere inside—he wishes had. The dreams he can't pretend anymore that he doesn't know whose mouth is on him, whose hands, whose cock is in him, sliding slow and deep. Times when he opens his dreaming eyes and sees the face over his so clearly the edges cut deep and do not bleed. Times when he makes love with a phantom, someone who no longer functionally exists in his life, and knows it has his brother's face._

_Dean…_

Sam's sneaker scrapes against the wood as he slides his foot under him, weight shifting so he can stand. At once, he feels a hand on his shoulder, pressing him back down. He can't turn his head to look, but he knows there is no hand there, only the impression of it, strong and comforting.

The wet spiraling heat of the room dissipates, as if someone's turned on a fan, and although still uncomfortably erect in his jeans, the desperate red-tinged yen to topple Montglane to the ground and rut into her until she screams is gone. Or…mostly.

_You should not toy with him so, sister-mine._ Sam hears the words in his head as one voice, sweet and dry at the same time; hears them come from his own lips, sounding not that much different. He should be startled, but he is not. _He is heartsick enough._

Across the table Montglane pouts, tossing her head as if a woman with much longer hair. "All the more reason," Erzulie says. "One good fuck could right all manner of ills, right woman give it to him."

Sam feels the weight of something, as if the rider in him _looks_ at him, like a buyer considering a horse. It is…disconcerting, and dispassionate, and he breaks out in cold prickling chills. _Perhaps so,_ the voice says in him, through him. _But you ain't that woman, Zelie. Look at his heart, all crossed up. Can't handle you; you'd break him, fragile as he is._

Erzulie makes a scornful noise and crosses her arms under her breasts. Sam wants to insist that he's not, but his tongue isn't his own to command. Instead, that spectral hand moves from his shoulder to his hair, ruffling it in a way that turns him heartsick and hot-eyed. _S'not your fault, chile,_ the voice says, and this time he senses—her?—more clearly, tiny and clear eyed. He hears the soft, dry slither of scales and knows her voice is for him and him alone. _You think it's that kiss, did this to you, that wretched amateur, call herself a succubus; turned you bad and strange and sad, but ain't so. You're your own man, Samuel Winchester; always have been. You go on and make up your own mind 'bout what it is you want. If'n it's really yours, it'll still be there, when the time come._

I don't understand.

She/it sighs. _Naw, don't 'spect you do. But that's okay. You gone be all right._ Again that hand ghosts through his hair, exactly like he thinks a mother's would. And then he understands that too; that she's not his mother, but she is _a_ mother. _So here's what we gonna do. We gone let Erzulie give you a kiss-- **one kiss** \--_ the rider looks at Erzulie with Sam's eyes, stern and reproachful, and Erzulie pouts again. _And then we'll see._

That's it? Sam demands, incredulous. Just…we'll see?

He feels her anger then, quiet and distant, but like a thunderstorm that can move fast to engulf everything in its path. _Don't presume on gifts freely given, my boy, less you want a whole heap more trouble than you already got a'comin. Just cause you hurt don't mean can't hurt you a whole lot more, should the mood take us, so you mind your mouth and your manners, y'hear?_

Yes ma'am.

_That's better._ Her hands go to his shoulders, one on either side and he feels her _fade_ and recede. Not all the way; just enough to give himself back to himself. Erzulie-Montglane gets up from the other side of the table, lazy and sauntering and comes over to stand between Sam's spread out legs.

"Wait…" Sam says, nervous, as she puts a hand to either side of his face. "Wait—"

"Hush, chile," Erzulie says, tilting his chin up. Her lips come down and over his. Her mouth is soft, and fever-hot and Sam's entire body erupts into flame. He arches up, into her, dying, crying out; horrible pain and wild blood-dark ecstasy almost indistinguishable. It burns him from the inside out, consuming him like a phoenix, and like a phoenix, he know he'll be reborn…

And the name on his lips is not hers.

"Sam?"

Sam comes back to himself with a kind of violent start, a little embarrassed that he's let his mind wander. "I'm sorry," he apologizes. His voice slurs and he feels simultaneously more worn and more relaxed than when he came in a few moments before. He thinks it might be the incense, woody and smoky. "I was somewhere else for a second."

It feels like it's been longer than a second. It feels like it's been a pretty long damn time, actually, but Gisele Montglane offers him a smile, unoffended and he has to guess that it wasn't more that long after all. "It takes everyone that way sometimes," she says, patting his hand before she lets him go. "I was just saying that there's no spell here, no hex. More than enough sadness for a couple folk," her smile takes the sting out of it, "but nothing magical and certainly nothing…nothing evil, nothing malicious, nothing bad."

Sam chews the inside of his lip until he tastes blood. There are reasons the Winchesters look at magic the way they do; it solves nothing and is usually more trouble than it's worth. Half the things he's killed probably wouldn't even exist, except for someone messing around with shit they had no business in. Which could be an analogy for Sam himself, as well. It just…it would have been nice to have an easy solution for once; a box in which to put…all of this. A box with a heavy lid and many locks, preferably. To Montglane, he nods and makes himself smile. "Well, thank you." He pushes the chair back from the table with a soft abrasive scrape and gets to his feet.

Or tries; his legs are weaker or more tired than he thought and his thighs are cramping. He has to catch himself on the chair back to keep from falling. Montglane rises in a swish of robes and comes to him, strong hands supporting him at elbow and wrist. "I'm sorry," he mutters again. His exhaustion must be even worse than he thought.

"It's all right," Montglane says reassuringly, patting his forearm as he gets his recalcitrant legs under him again. "Come. I have something for you."

He follows her to another room, this one small and narrow, obviously once a pantry or closet. The dust smell is thick here and Sam fights the need to sneeze. Montglane mixes a little of this, a little of that together in a square of flannel, adds a tiny chip of bone and seals the whole thing with wax and a droplet of blood from her own finger. She prays over it for several moments while Sam shuffles uncomfortably.

She presses it into his hand and then walks him to the door of her sanctum.

"Thank you," he says again, tucking the little _gris-gris_ into the inside pocket of his coat. The sentiment is heartfelt; though he still feels weak and strange, he also feels more at peace than he has in weeks and he's not dreading the idea of sleep.

Montglane smiles and reaches up to ruffle his hair. She's a tall woman standing—about Dean's height—and he ducks his head, embarrassed and pleased. "You're a good boy, Samuel Winchester, and don't let nobody tell you different. You come back and see me some time."

He nods and ducks through the door. The other woman is waiting outside. She gives him a smile and takes his hand as she walks him to the door of the shop. "You be well now, hear?" she tells him, and adds something he doesn't understand in French.

He's about six blocks away when Connor catches up to him. He doesn't even bother feeling startled anymore. That's just how Connor is; one moment not-there, the next right alongside you, like he's been there the whole time. "How'd it go?" Connor asks.

Sam shrugs, hunching his shoulders deeper in his coat. "Fine, I guess. Kind of weird."

Which is another word that could describe just about everything about Sam and his whole fucked up _(and if it's not her, then it's **him** , him and Dean…_)…no. No. He's not going to think about that. He can change. He _can_ . He will.

Connor nods. "So. You all fixed now?"

Sam laughs. "You make it sound like I'm a stray cat or something, man."

Connor's head tips sideways a little, considering, before he shrugs. "Isn't that exactly what we are?" he asks. "Couple of strays? Though I'd take dog over cat. Or wolf maybe." Connor throws his head back and howls. He elbows Sam in the side and after a second, Sam puts back his head and joins him; couple of strays howling down the moon.


End file.
